But NDE is a gradual tiny step-wise process which should show up as such in the fossil record. So why doesn’t it? As the known fossil record continues to increase with further excavation, more and more of the millions of gradual, tiny morphological steps should show up, but what mainly has been happening is that the same pattern is just made clearer. As Jerry pointed out (from Denton), a large percentage of all vertebrate families and orders have been found in the fossil record. If Darwinian gradualism were the mechanism, the fossil record would also have been found to contain a similar high percentage of all the millions of transitionals between these families and orders.

The conditions for fossilization could somehow always be unfavorable during millions of years of slow macroevolution, but this is clearly untenable.

Punctuated equilibrium theory tries to rescue the NDE theory by saying it always is somehow taking place very rapidly in small peripheral populations that are not fossilized because of small numbers and relatively short time periods. But the small peripheral populations are too small to have the large pool of variation needed by the NDE process to select from in each generation. It is argued that if these small peripheral populations cumulatively cover a large range they may well have many more opportunities to try out mutations in small isolated populations. However, this doesn’t somehow overcome the statistical problem. A small reproductively isolated population will be limited to the greatly reduced sequence space of different random variations allowed by the small population, and will have the further problem of increased genetic drift.

If it always happens too fast for fossil detection the number of generations for NDE to accomplish the transformation is severely limited. But the NDE process needs not only large populations for large numbers of potentially beneficial genetic changes to occur somewhere, but also large expanses of time for the huge numbers of generations needed. It doesn’t get either in the punctuated equilibrium model.

So the lack of transitionals is recognized as one of the major problems for NDE, with no satisfactory solution as of yet or even on the horizon.

I hope you guys don’t mind if I repost what I said before:

First off, ID is compatible with universal common descent and you’ll find a lot of supporters of such hypotheses on UD. This is despite the fact that Darwinists claim that “As such, it [Tiktaalik] will be a blow to proponents of intelligent design, who claim that the many gaps in the fossil record show evidence of some higher power.” Here is how Bill Dembski put it:

““Intelligent design does not so much challenge whether evolution occurred but how it occurred. In particular, it questions whether purposeless material processes–as opposed to intelligence–can create biological complexity and diversity.”

Second, despite the hype surrounding Tiktaalik I believe it’s prudent to consider the evidence fully.

Click me for image of comparisons between the samples

The origin of major tetrapod features has remained obscure for lack of fossils that document the sequence of evolutionary changes. Scientists speculate that the front fins of the Tiktaalik allowed the creature to hoist itself up and possibly drag its tail behind. Unfortunately, lacking living representatives, scientists are unable to tell for certain what the fin bones actually were used for (other than the obvious one of swimming). Side-by-side comparisons do not look that informative, especially when there are no soft parts and no evidence for how the creature actually lived. It must be remembered, for instance, that Coelacanth was long considered a transitional form because of its bony fins, but when discovered alive, the fish did not use them for walking or raising itself up in any way. The same thing happened to “Lucy” last year when more evidence was discovered in Dikika, Ethiopia, since “all three lines of evidence suggest that the locomotion of A. afarensis was unlikely to have been restricted to walking on two feet” (‘Palaeoanthropology: A precious little bundle’ Nature 443(7109):278–281, 21 September 2006.”) and thus was demoted and placed in a separate lineage. The general conclusion seems to be it may have been capable of walking upright some of the time—as does the living pygmy chimp (bonobo)–but “[i]t is now recognized widely that the australopithecines are not structurally closely similar to humans, that they must have been living at least in part in arboreal environments, and that many of the later specimens were contemporaneous or almost so with the earlier members of the genus Homo.” (C.E. Oxnard, Nature 258:389–395) The latest evidence seems to indicate that an arboreal lifestyle is even more likely.

Back to Tiktaalik. Although these small distal bones bear some resemblance to tetrapod digits in terms of their supposed function and range of movement, they are still very much components of a fin. There remains a large morphological gap between them and digits as seen in, for example, Acanthostega: if the digits evolved from these distal bones, the process must have involved considerable developmental repatterning. The implication is that function changed in advance of morphology…assuming the storytelling about Tiktaalik’s lifestyle are true, of course.

In particular we have almost no information about the step between Tiktaalik and the earliest tetrapods, when the anatomy underwent the most drastic changes, or about what happened in the following Early Carboniferous period, after the end of the Devonian, when tetrapods became fully terrestrial.

So, no, despite being a potential transitional (notice that I’m not immediately rejecting it, but being cautious, which is prudent given the examples of the Coelacanth and A. afarensis) overall I don’t see this example as being particularly strong considering it largely rides on the storytelling and the base assertion (hype) that it is a major find, and not the evidence itself. The usual lack of details is also present. Would the minor ability to supposedly drag itself along the ground give enough selective pressure to evolve into a tetrapod? The ability to soak up sun in the arctic, as I’ve also seen speculated? It’s speculated that it might be capable of escaping predators by dragging itself onto land, although how large of a factor this would be is unknown. Sounds squirrelly to me. Also, what exactly was predicted (not “predicting” after the fact) about the Tiktaalik that they’d find…that’s one thing I did not see discussed when I read about the Tiktaalik.

The major issue is that Darwinian mechanisms do not have any positive evidence to say they are capable of providing such a transition. Intelligent evolution (whatever the mechanism) would at least be capable. With intelligent evolution the changes can also be quite rapid, as well, conforming to the evidence better. Not to mention, the true evolutionary lineage for tetrapods might not even include the Tiktaalik at all. Scientists thought tetrapods evolved in the northern hemisphere (Tiktaalik was found in the arctic) but examples like the Gogonasus, which shares some similarities with Tiktaalik, was found in Australia. Convergent evolution or frontloading or are both dead ends for investigation into tetrapod evolution?

Henry Gee, editor of Nature, on the feasibility of reconstructing phylogenetic trees from fossils: “To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story — amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”

Your main argument seems to be an argument by sarcasm (while waiting for Jerry to wow me with statistics).

Guilty as charged. And I am disappointed that you haven’t really provided much of a convincing argument. In fact, you have managed to make your position even less convincing.

You first start by throwing out a few numbers in support of the notion that the fossil record is relatively complete. But, then you try to dismiss Tiktaalik with this, that I snipped for brevity:

So far we have very little on the Tiktaalik and we will have to wait for future excavations for anything further.

In this you are basically saying that the fossil record is inconclusive with regard to whether Tiktaalik is truly the transitional that the discoverer’s think it is. So, within the space of one (!) post you’ve managed to advance the notion that the fossil record is conclusive enough to support your pet theory, but too inconclusive to support the supposition you don’t like. Heads I win, tails you lose!

I realize that I am advancing the same argument as the “Darwinists” y’all like to demonize. I suppose that will make my time here short. But, as I said, I am not opposed to ID. As a deist, I’d like to see proof of more than a disinterested designer. But, I am, sadly not finding it here. In fact, your argument regarding Tiktaalik filling a gap in a evolutionary history seems to boil down to nothing more than exclaiming “Look, now there are two gaps!” You are going to have to do alot better than that to convince me, to say nothing of folks that are openly hostile to your hypotheses.

Is there a list of ID papers that have been rejected by the Darwinist journals that I can review while waiting for Jerry to wow me with statistics?

Try starting here:

http://arn.org/

But I really suggest you start by getting your hands on Sanford’s “Genetic Entropy” and Behe’s “Edge of Evolution”.

Your main argument seems to be an argument by sarcasm (while waiting for Jerry to wow me with statistics).

Each year there are new sites excavated for fossils. Each can be considered as a sample of the fossil record. By the way sampling is the basic process of probability. If the sample only has repeats of fossils from previous samples then the likelihood that there are other fossils that are still out there to be found from additional samples gets increasingly smaller as the total N of the number of samples gets larger. Each year N gets larger with few new fossils and nearly all repeats of already found fossils.

If you like specific numbers then the following is from Denton’s Evolution, a Theory in Crisis:

1 – There are 43 known living orders of vertebrates and 42 have been found in the fossil record.

2 – There are 329 living families of vertebrates and 261 have been found as fossils or about 80%. If one removes birds from this count there are 178 families of vertebrates and 156 of them have been found as fossils or 88%. The birds have only 70% fossilization.

Thus to argue the fossil record is incomplete when it seems to have been able to find all the current vertebrate life forms and not to find all the millions of transitional species that are necessary for gradualism is ludicrous.

The Tiktaalik has been discussed here before. If it is a link, what is a link between? There does not seem to be anything on either side of it for 10′s of million years. More than likely it is just another species that suddenly appeared and then disappeared into extinction like the rest of the fossil record. So rather than being a transitional species, of which there should be tens of thousands for its particular line, it maybe just a one off species that appeared and then disappeared. So far we have very little on the Tiktaalik and we will have to wait for future excavations for anything further.

Tiktaalik is not the example that you think it is. The fossil record was not used to figure out what should be in the fossil record, that claim is overblown. What happened was that scientists decided they should be able to find fossils in a certain location – right next to water – and surprise, they found it. It’s not a big deal, considering most animals have to come to water or live near it. This does not support your position.

A gross oversimplification that suggests to me that you really don’t know much about the process behind Tiktaalik or you are being willfully obtuse.

It wasn’t just a case of looking near water. If it was as simple as that, the scientists could have just looked near water alot closer to home than the wilds of northern Canada. It was a case of looking at a very specific locale and in a very specific strata of rock.

And, finally, your false dichotomy charge is basically what you were guilty of. You are now conflating. The science of ID is in its infancy. Before, people had an inkling or an inference, but no real science to hang their hat on. Now, with Behe, Dembski, Wells, Meyer, etc. we have real science to hang our hat on in regards to ID.

Okay fine, lets accept that as true for the sake of moving the argument along. As I said, I am a deist. I am certainly open to the ID argument. I’d like it to succeed. Are you willing to step into Jerry’s shoes and wow me with the statistics of the fossil record?

Gradualism is no straw man.

As University of Chicago evolutionary geneticist Jerry Coyne wrote:

“There is only one going theory of evolution, and it is this: organisms evolved gradually over time and split into different species, and the main engine of evolutionary change was natural selection. Sure, some details of these processes are unsettled, but there is no argument among biologists about the main claims.

Gradualism is the only game in town for chance & necessity. The fossil record doesn’t support gradualism. It was once thought that it would but no matter how much digging gets done the story remains the same. One may assert that the fossil record is woefully incomplete but that is nothing more than wishful thinking. It is an assertion generated by a certainty that gradualism is correct where it then follows if the fossil record doesn’t support gradualism then the fossil record is flawed rather than the certain fact of gradualism.

Now I’m certainly willing to entertain the idea that the fossil record is flawed but more likely it isn’t. We’ve done a lot of digging since Darwin proposed gradualism and the story hasn’t changed.

Be that as it may even gradualism isn’t enough to salvage evolution by chance & necessity. The statistical likelyhood of beneficial mutations that are both selectable and that occur in numbers that aren’t drowned in a sea of detrimental mutations is simply to remote to be a reasonable mechanism. Blog comments are not an approrpriate forum to belabor the data and statistics. Whole books are devoted to it. Try reading Behe’s “Edge of Evolution” and Sanfords’s “Genetic Entropy”.

Your appeals to Dr. Behe’s argument are non sequitor. We are not talking about IC.

And, finally, your false dichotomy charge is basically what you were guilty of. You are now conflating. The science of ID is in its infancy. Before, people had an inkling or an inference, but no real science to hang their hat on. Now, with Behe, Dembski, Wells, Meyer, etc. we have real science to hang our hat on in regards to ID. And, yes, suppression is a real problem. I hide behind a pseudonym because of it. Gonzalez was denied tenure because of it. Sternberg was, well, “sternberged” because of it. Shall I go on?

Peace,
By your remark, perhaps you think the search for transitional fossils is just getting started? See, I have some snark too.